The present invention relates to optical fiber transmission systems and more particularly to a method and apparatus for introducing chromatic dispersion into such a system to limit its information carrying capacity.
It is sometimes desirable to limit the capacity of an optical transmission system to some predetermined maximum data rate. For example, a customer may purchase the sole use of a single-mode optical fiber transmission line and connect its own terminal equipment thereto. The price of using the transmission line may be based on the maximum data rate that the customer intends to transmit. The bandwidth of the single-mode fiber transmission line may be much greater than that currently needed by the customer.